It’s the wealthiest who are taking it on the chin as the massive sell-off in stocks continues for a third day on Tuesday over worries about inflation, rate hikes, and the effects of tax cuts overheating the economy.
The drop in the Dow and other major market indices has become such a big story that even the non-financial media outlets have parked television trucks just off Wall Street in downtown Manhattan. But the reality is that not everyone in America is exposed to the stock market. In fact, stocks are mostly owned by the wealthiest households.
Since Monday’s sell-off, the 100 richest people in the world have lost a combined $68.65 billion, according to data from the Bloomberg Billionaire’s Index, a daily ranking of the world’s richest people. Collectively, the world’s richest 250 individuals have shed approximately $94.2 billion in net-worth since Tuesday’s decline, the index shows.
Just last month, Deutsche Bank released its massive “US Income and Wealth Inequality” slide deck authored by Peter Hooper, Matthew Luzzetti, Brett Ryan, Justin Weidner, Torsten Slok, and Rajsekar Bhattacharyya. Some of those slides highlight how it’s the wealthiest who own a majority of the stocks.
Here’s a quick rundown:
The richest 10% hold the bulk of the stocks.
Just 25% of households own more than $25,000 worth of stocks
The richest 1% own 40% of stocks held by households.
Households making over $250,000 own 60.5% of stocks held by households.
So, while the wealthiest benefit the most from a stock market rally, they’re also the ones losing the most when prices tank.
Julia La Roche is a finance reporter at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter.